Selfie Week 1

 

My Self Image

Guillermo Argueta Focus 2022

Carrie Mae Kitchen Table

reference image (n.d.). Retrieved September 13, 2022, from http://carriemaeweems.net/galleries/kitchen-table.html.)

Video reference (YouTube. (2018). YouTube. Retrieved September 13, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wBEqPrgUDY.)

I was inspired by Carrie Mae Weems, The Kitchen Table Series, 1990 and tried replicating the same photo by using my son in the picture. Both images displayed concentration by the individual on what they were trying to do. For example, in The Kitchen Table Series, both women were trying to do the makeup. While my son was concentrating on stacking the fruit onto each other. In the video Carrie Mae Weems, Untitled (Woman Feeding Bird), The Kitchen Table Series, 1989-90, it said, “the kitchen is not a place for food, but it is a place where home happens.” In that moment both pictured showed no expression of fear, stress, nor any negative emotions. Since home is meant to be a place where you’re safe and at ease.

Susan Sontag excerpt from On Photography

(Qoute 1) “In deciding how a picture should look, in preferring one exposure to another, photographers are always imposing standards on their subjects.”

(response)This quote could’ve not been well put in any other way. For me personally, when I take a picture of my son. I not only take multiple pictures of him but also do it in many angles while comparing them all at once. To the point I review all pictures and try to replicate them if they can be made better. After doing all this, I still debate if the picture is the “one.”

(Qoute 2) “To collect photographs is to collect the world. Movies and television programs light up walls, flicker, and go out; but with still photographs the image is also an object, lightweight, cheap to produce, easy to carry about, accumulate, store. “

(Response)Photographs taken in any place that makes you want to take them is forever kept as a memory. This memory not only stays in your mind, but it is kept like a trophy. I interpreted Susan’s second half of the quote (Movies and Television) as television showing reruns. Although a certain show can be amazing and can play forever. The quality of a certain picture will overweigh the show due to the experience you felt while capturing the photographs.

Revisiting Carrie Mae Weems’s Landmark “Kitchen Table Series”
by Jacqui Palumbo for Artsy 

(Quote 1) But it was also a seminal moment for Black representation in art, influencing an entire generation of artists who rarely saw their own selves reflected back on museum walls.”

(Response) This quote was said with a powerful message. Especially when African American were being mistreated physically and mentally. For an African American artwork to be put in an art show is beyond a “flex, "during the time of segregation. Back then, artwork from the blacks would be put all the way to the end of the museums or by the bathroom only. For an African American to even make it, showed it is still possible. This led to the influence of many African Americans to continue working on their works and to keep pushing for their dreams.

 

(Qoute 2) “I think it’s very important that as a Black woman she’s engaged with the world around her; she’s engaged with history, she’s engaged with looking, with being. She’s a guide into circumstances seldom seen.”

(Response)This quote was a very interesting and I took it as “the more a message can be related to, the more of an affect it can leave.” For example, you can make an artwork and many people have different opinions on it. This leads to separation of thoughts to many people. However, Jacqui states, “the world around her; She's engaged with history, she's engaged with looking, with being.” The art being portrayed not only correlates with one another, but it sends the message. Thus, making it easy for everyone to understand and receive the same message.